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Yevgeny Kaspersky, CEO of Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs, one of the world's largest software security firms.

When it comes to market share for the world's consumer IT security market, Moscow based KasperskyLabs is growing, while Symantec and McAfee's market share is shrinking.

Granted, they are all competing with freeware and "freemium" (free + premium in industry jargon) companies that are sprouting up. But that does not take away from the fact that Kaspersky, while a hell of a lot smaller than Symantec and McAfee is growing its market and the two US household names are not.

Symantec and McAfee are, by far, a dominant force: an elephant to Kaspersky's mouse. Combined, they had a 30% share of the world's software security market, down from 31% in 2009 and down again from the 32% of the market in 2008. Kaspersky's market share went from just 2% in 2008 to 3.2% in 2010.

Kaspersky owes much of that growth to small and mid-sized US businesses, says Peter Firstbrook, research director at Gartner.

"The US government and defense contractors won't deal with Kaspersky, so that is a market they are cut out of. But businesses don't have a problem with them. They have had a lot of success in influencing the influencers," Firstbrook says.

Kaspersky has had considerable success in the retail internet security market in the US. That success has ultimately translated into growth into enterprise business software, especially in the small-to-media businesses, or SMB.

"They are in a market that Symantec and McAfee haven't really paid much attention to because they are focused on much large end-users, but in the long run I see them taking even more market share away from the top two companies. They totally left an opening for Kaspersky and some freeware competitors in the SMB space," says Firstbrook.

Kaspersky was ranked No. 3 in the consumer internet security space by Gartner in its March 30 Global Software Security report, which looked at year-ending 2010 revenue results and market share for the big name brand companies operating in the $16.6 billion software security market worldwide.

Kaspersky's share of the consumer software security market rose 7% since 2008. Kaspersky's revenues rose to $537.9 million in 2010 compared with $391.6 million in 2009 and $274 million in 2008. By comparison, Kaspersky still looks tiny. Symantec's 2010 revenues were $3.1 billion last year, but are relatively flat from 2009 and 2008 levels. McAfee had 2010 revenues of $1.85 billion, up from $1.59 billion in 2009 and $1.4 billion in 2008.